In the latest information clampdown on the
Afghan detainee file, the public has been barred from two days of open-door
hearings on the matter after the federal government argued that having
journalists present would pose a security threat.

Acting on a request from federal government lawyers, the Military Police
Complaints Commission barred the public from hearings until Thursday and
hung a curtain, or veil, across the doors so that nobody could even glimpse
the proceedings inside.

Late Tuesday, the commission promised it would release uncensored
transcripts of the hearings as soon as they become available. But the move
by the federal Department of Justice to limit public access to the inquiry
is part of a pattern of behaviour by Ottawa, which has repeatedly tried to
constrain this probe.

The arms-length Military Police Complaints Commission is investigating
why Canada continued transferring suspects rounded up by its soldiers to
torture-prone Afghan jails even after Ottawa received multiple complaints of
abuse.

Over the past two years it has run into a string of roadblocks that
Harper government lawyers have set up to delay and severely limit the scope
of the probe. Tuesday was the first day of hearings to feature witnesses who
have served in the war in Afghanistan.

Two hours before Sergeant Carol Utton, a military police officer, was due
to testify Tuesday , Department of Justice lawyers requested the public be
cleared from the hearing room. The government then cited the National
Defence Act in asking that the hearings be conducted in private for two
days: April 6 and April 7.

Elizabeth Richards, a government lawyer, would say only there was
something worth keeping secret.

“The justification is it’s sensitive. I can tell you there’s a security
concern that’s been raised,” Ms. Richards told The Globe and Mail.

Ron Lunau, lead lawyer for the commission, refused to say exactly why he
and commissioners agreed to exclude the public. He said the reasons are
confidential and that the commission would issue a written rationale for its
decision.

“We’re not blind to the fact this is a public hearing.”

Sgt. Utton, the first witness to testify Tuesday, has previously told
commission investigators about the suffering one detainee experienced at
Canada’s holding facility in Kandahar. The man was stuck there after Ottawa
halted holdovers to the Afghans in early 2007 after a legal bid by
human-rights groups to end the practice of transfers.

“It was the most terrible experience to watch this man,” Sgt. Utton told
investigators in 2008.

The detainee, who had health problems, was forced to remain in the
facility – not built for stays of more than 96 hours – even as temperatures
in confinement soared to intolerable levels. “The facility just was not made
to hold somebody that long,” Sgt. Utton said in 2008.

The detainee’s screaming and crying – “Who’s feeding my kids? Who’s
looking after my wife?” – prompted nearby soldiers to ask the Canadians if
they were keeping a dog in there.

“He would scream and yell and climb the cage,” Sgt. Utton recounted at
the time. “At one point we had to go in and take the plastic knife from
him.”

Paul Champ, a lawyer acting for Amnesty International and the B.C. Civil
Liberties Association, said he didn’t formally oppose the move to exclude
the public in part because he didn’t want to push back hearings by another
one to two days to fight it.

Mr. Champ said the fact the Justice Department agreed to release
uncensored transcripts of the testimony was critical to his decision not to
oppose the exclusive hearings.

“It was highly unusual but these are not key witnesses.”

However, Mr. Champ said he is concerned Ottawa may try again to seek
similar exclusions on future hearing dates and vowed to oppose efforts to
bar the public from hearing the testimony of major witnesses.

NDP foreign affairs critic Paul Dewar called the closed-door hearings
“farcical” and questioned why Ottawa waited until the last minute to argue
there was a security threat.

Liberal defence critic Ujjal Dosanjh said the Harper government’s record
of interference in this inquiry suggests it’s trying to hide details from
Canadians.

Mr. Harper and other recent Canadian Governments, have played upon the fact
that the average Canadian will not notice the corrosion of fundamental
principles of justice and the Rule of Law.

Our "Public Courts" are anything but public.
The underbelly of the judiciary regularly remove anyone from the court room they
don't like.

In Ontario, back in 1989, Justice Howland ruled that self reps and journalists
did not require the courts permission to make tape-recordings.

Ontario Judges later threw that out and DEMAND PRIOR permission, which of course
NO ONE is prepared to ask for because its an unwritten fact, most judges don't
want anyone having an audio recording.

Judges routinely say things in court that is later ignored in their decisions,
One ruling can be made orally and the decision, its reasons, have an entirely
different story and effect.

That's a matter of judicial discretion, they can do that, so what, but, the only
reason the Judiciary have to prevent recordings is to maintain a cloak of
secrecy.

Transcripts, are expensive, they are riddled with errors, transcribers know what
a judges views are and they regularly change transcripts to cause extreme
prejudice to one party.

It only takes an omission of a no, a change in a comma, a mispronunciation, a la
deliberate spelling error can all suddenly change the a transcript.

Then there are the omitted pauses, an entire line of transcript may have had a
significant pause that a recording would show and raise red flags but the
transcripts may show nothing.

Placing a curtain across the doors is just adding insults to the already very
insulting approach Mr. Harper has taken to remove all legal rights and to engage
in typical Court Room tactics of "failure to disclose".

When it comes to the Legal Rights of Canadians, and the rights and abuses of
prisoners, in Canada and Afghanistan, Mr. Harper behaves like a dictator and
tells Canadians what we can see and hear.